“All of our provisional ideas in psychology will presumably one day be based on an organic substructure,” Sigmund Freud wrote. By clarifying the biological foundations of the symptoms of mental disorders, science would be able to find the appropriate description of and treatment for specific illnesses. For most of the 20th century, though, clinicians didn’t worry too much about precise classification; most patients sought treatment for combinations of depression, anxiety and other forms of distress. But by the 1970s the classificatory impulse as a vehicle for scientific legitimacy came to the fore. In “DSM: A History of Psychiatry’s Bible,” Allan V. Horwitz tells the story of how the third incarnation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders revolutionized our understanding of psychological suffering. As with so many revolutions, it’s a cautionary tale.

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